Peter,
It is Dr. Gary Greig here: I too am an Anglican, and I appreciate so much your gentle wisdom web-site. Thank you for your outline of my paper here. I think you may have missed my point in the first section of the paper. The point was that one need only watch the meetings to see raw, empirical data that cannot be explained away as somehow “not really real”–so many miracles such as people getting out of wheelchairs, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, children born with cross-eyed conditions who are clearly not cross-eyed any more with parents who attest to their children’s former condition. It is impossible that all these hundreds, thousands of people who claimed to have been healed are ALL deceived, lying, or making it up. The point, then is that empirical evidence that is observable before our very eyes is available to the world through God TV and the internet and cannot be explained away like Ahmadinajad tried to deny the clear reality of the Holocaust. The critics are ignoring the forest for the trees. They did the same thing back in the Vineyard revival of the 1980’s and 1990’s when John Wimber received the same criticism. That is why Kevin Springer and I published “The Kingdom and the Power,” a compilation of chapters from 15 evangelical scholars and church leaders, including J. I. Packer, Wayne Grudem, Don Williams, Charles Kraft, etc., laying out the biblical and practical foundations of power evangelism. Chapter 13 of that book by Dr. David Lewis, a cultural anthropologist and research associate of Cambridge University, UK, statistically documents, as thoroughly as anyone would want or desire, mutiple verified healings from the Vineyard revival that are similar in every way to the current Lakeland healings (healing resulted when people were prayed for in Jesus’ name, bringing Him glory and making people want to follow Jesus even more). Lewis also cited medical doctor, Dr. Rex Gardner’s similar verifications of reported Christian healings in the “British Medical Journal” (vol 287, 1983) and in Gardner’s book “Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates” (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986) The bottom-line is: I’ve seen the critics make the same false claims about healings not being real before, Peter. They weren’t right about the Vineyard healings and they are certainly not right about the current Lakeland healings. Especially given the fact that I myself have been healed of sleep apnea (a condition where the tongue blocks the throat so that one cannot breathe during sleep–people often have heart attacks and die from sleep apnea), two weeks ago while watching the Lakeland meetings. (And, no, I cannot agree with critics who will certainly claim that my healing is of the devil–why would the devil make me love and praise Jesus more, which is what this healing has done for me? And no, I cannot agree with critics who will argue that my healing from sleep apnea is really not real–My wife would adamantly disagree: I used to stop breathing hundreds of times per night and snore loudly waking and scaring my wife half to death; and I used to have to wear various paraphernalia around my head and in my mouth to keep my tongue from blocking my throat at night so I could breathe at all–but NOW I DO NOT WEAR THEM ANY MORE and I SLEEP LIKE A BABY: I couldn’t possibly have made this up for the past 14 nights!) So I conclude from the empirical evidence of my own healing, from the empirical evidence of miraculous healings that bear good fruit (people loving Jesus more) that I see every night in the Lakeland meetings, and from the biblical evidence presented in my paper, and from the independent witness of mainstream Old and New Testament scholars about the significance of the biblical evidence, that what is happening at Lakeland IS INDEED from God.

Empirical evidence matters. The truth matters. We cannot make reality go away because we refuse to acknowledge what is real. That is why I see the critics no different than Ahmadinajad’s denying the abundant empirical evidence that the Holocaust really did happen, just as there is abundant empirical evidence in the Lakeland meetings that people really are being healed (like I was) for all who have eyes that can see.

Blessings upon you and thank you again for your peaceable tone on this web-site. Please forgive me if my tone doesn’t sound peaceable. I really want to be. But I see a clear denial of reality in the way the critics are reasoning. And their thinking is not worthy of the Lord. He expects more of His people. He expects us to bind the enemy, to humble ourselves and our thinking before Him, and to ask His Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth (John 16:13-15; James 4:7-8; John 10:27-28; Prov. 2:1-10). Anything less is unworthy of our Lord. He is calling the Body to deliberate, Spirit-led standards of scholarship and theological research and education. And that is how I came to my conclusions about Lakeland–I asked Him to lead me, I bound the enemy from interfering, and I consciously listened to the Holy Spirit as I studied the passages and the research of biblical scholars on those passages. Anything less is not worthy of His Holy Name, Jesus.

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Thank you, Dr. Greig, for sharing about your healing and for sharing how you went about your research for the paper that you have given to the Body.

If you have not read Dr. Grieg’s paper, I would strongly urge you to do so. The link is at the top of this article. It is a very thorough examination of various objections that have been expressed regarding the Outpouring.

Rahab, Interesting stuff. And you know I’m
a skeptic, but check this out:
On Fox News I saw a story where a baby that
was dead for one day woke up when she was
taken to the cemetary! In Bombay India.. Kind of makes me scratch my head?!

Nancy, there is so much more than we can see, feel, taste and touch in the kingdom of God. And God is a good God. He’s good all the time. That is one of the more reassuring things about him. That’s why I keep getting in the middle of these things. 😀

Todd is a true voice of God and is being used mightly as an end time voice for this day. God is calling His bride to prepare for the return of our Lord. We should all be praying that this outpouring and move of God will increase across our land and the world and we begin to learn to live in the supernatural as we walk in the power of the spirit.

I read Dr. Grieg’s paper in defense of this movement in Fl. I think he and I are in the same corner. He makes lots of broad generalities which I agree with wholeheartedly. However, he doesn’t tackle the “biggies” at the roots of this movement like “a Sundar Singh (lots of heretical teachings + necromancy to boot) annointing”, an angel called “Emma”, (Emma O is a name for satan found in the satanic bible), or the “Winds of Change” angel that supposedly followed William Branham (who is buried under a pyramid-shaped tombstone because he believed that the pyramids and the zodiac were equal with the Bible for God’s revelation.) When is someone going to stop talking about the supposed fruit – and talk about the root? Thousands of bonefide miracles took place at Fatima, Portugal. Great. Where did they lead? God worship…and Mary and the saints and…Not all healings and miracles are of God. (2Thess. 2:9) By the way, all of the proponents of this “revival” point to the miracles as “fruit” but don’t want to look at the other end of the tree, the roots. There you’ll find a lot of demonic stuff – why Todd Bentley has removed “Sundar Singh” and “Emma” from his website in recent weeks.

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I have had some search engine hits looking for our ministry/revival center which we are calling Xtreme Encounters, because we have been having extreme encounters with the Lord. You can find our ministry website at xtremeencounters.com.